with a turn in 'em! Do 'ee mind what a Dover-to-pay there was gettin' out the poor soul's coffin? An' then look at the size of my dresser. … "
"I can't think why you turn out, for my part. Pamphlett's served me with notice to quit by to-morra. You don't catch me, though."
"Why, Mr. Nanjivell, you won't set yourself up to fly in the teeth of the law!"
"Just you wait. … And Pamphlett doesn' know all the law that's in the land, neither, if he reckons to turn me out 'pon a Bank Holiday."
Mrs. Penhaligon stared. "Well, I s'wow! Bank Holiday to-morra, and I'd clean forgot it! … But, with the Lord's Sabbath standin' 'pon its head, 'tis excusable. The children, now—out an' runnin' the town in the Sunday clothes with never a thought o' breakfast; and how I'm to get their boots an' faces clean in time for Chapel, let alone washin'-up, I ask you!"
"Well, I'll go upstairs an' get a shave," said Nicky-Nan. "That'll feel like Sunday anyhow."
"Poor lonely creatur'!" thought Mrs. Penhaligon, who always pitied bachelors. On an impulse she said, "An' when you've done, Mr. Nanjivell, there'll be fried eggs an' bacon, if you're not above acceptin' the compliment for once."
When Nicky-Nan came downstairs again, clean-shaven and wearing his Sunday suit of threadbare sea-cloth, he found the Penhaligon children seated at the board, already plying their spoons in bowls of bread-and-milk. As a rule, like other healthy children, they ate first and talked afterwards. But to-day, with War in the air, they chattered, stirring the sop around and around. 'Beida's eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed.
"War's a funny thing," she mused. "Where do you feel it, Mother?"
"Don't clacky so much, that's a darlin', but go on with your breakfast." But Mrs. Penhaligon heaved a sigh that was answer enough.
"Well, I wanted to know, because down by Quay-end I heard old Aun' Rundle say it made her feel like the bottom of her stomach was fallin' out. I suppose it takes people differ'nt as they get up in years."
"I know azackly where I feel it!" announced 'Biades. "It's here." He set down his spoon and pointed a finger on the third button of his small waistcoat. "An' it keeps workin' up an' down an' makin' noises just like Billy Richard's key-bugle."
"Then it's a mercy it ben't real," commented his brother.
"'Biades is right, all the same." 'Beida regarded the child and nodded slowly. "It do feel very much like when you hear a band comin' up the street. It catches you—" She broke off and laid her open palm on her chest a little below the collar. "An' then it's creepin' up the back of your legs an' along your arms, an' up your backbone, right into the roots o' your hair. But the funniest thing of all is, the place looks so differ'nt—an' all the more because there's so little happenin' differ'nt. … I can't tell just what I mean," she owned candidly, turning to Nicky-Nan; "but it don't seem we be here somehow, nor the houses don't seem real, somehow. 'Tis as if your real inside was walkin' about somewhere else, listenin' to the band."
"Nonsense your tellin'," 'Bert interrupted. "Father's put on his uniform. How can you make it that things ben't differ'nt, after that?"
"An' he's here!" 'Biades nodded, over his half-lifted spoon, at Nicky-Nan.
"Oh!" said 'Bert, "that isn' because of the War. That's to say
Good-bye, because he's turnin' out this week."
"For goodness, children, eat up your meal, an' stop talkin'!"
Mrs. Penhaligon returned from the hearth to the table and set down a
dish of eggs and sizzling bacon. "Wherever you pick up such notions!
… You must excuse their manners, Mr. Nanjivell."
But Nicky-Nan was staring at young 'Bert from under fiercely bent eyebrows.
"Who told you that I was turnin' out this week?" he demanded.
"I heard Mr. Pamphlett say it, day before yesterday. He was round with Squinny Gilbert—"
"Fie now, your manners get worse and worse!" his mother reproved him.
"Who be you, to talk of the builder-man without callin' him
'Mister'?"
"Well then, he was round with Mister Squinny Gilbert, lookin' over the back o' the house. I heard him say as you was done for, and would have to clear inside the next two or three days—"
"He did—did he?" Nicky-Nan was arising in ungovernable rage; but
Mrs. Penhaligon coaxed him to sit down.
"There now!" she said soothingly. "Take un' eat, Mr. Nanjivell! The Good Lord bids us be like the lilies o' the field, and I can vouch the eggs to be new-laid. Sufficient for the day. … An' here 'tis the Sabbath, an' to-morrow Bank Holiday. Put the man out o' your thoughts, an' leave the Lord to provide."
"If I had that man here—"
Nicky-Nan was sharp set; indeed he had been hungry, more or less, for weeks. But now, with the eggs and bacon wooing his nostrils, his choler arose and choked him. He stared around the cleanly kitchen. "And on quarter-day, ma'am, 'twill be your turn. It beats me how you can take it so quiet."
"I reckon," said Mrs. Penhaligon simply, looking down on the dish of eggs (which maybe suggested the image to her)—"I reckon as the hen's home is wherever she can gather the chickens under her wings. Let's be thankful we're not like they poor folk abroad, to have our homes overrun by this War."
"'War'?" Nicky-Nan recollected himself with an effort. "Seemin' to me you're all taken up with it. As though there weren't other things in this world—"
"If only the Almighty'll send my Sam home safe an' well!"
But at this point Mr. Penhaligon entered the kitchen, with the sea-boots dangling from his hand. He wore his naval uniform—that of an A.B.; blue jumper and trousers, white cinglet edged with blue around his stout throat, loose black neck-cloth and lanyard white as driven snow. His manner was cheerful—even ostentatiously cheerful: but it was to be observed that his eyes avoided his wife's.
"Hullo, naybour!" he shouted, perceiving Nicky-Nan. "Well, now, I count this real friendly of ye, to come an' give me the send-off." And indeed Nicky's presence seemed to be a sensible relief to him. "Haven't ate all the eggs, I hope? For I be hungry as a hunter. … Well, so it's War for sure, and a man must go off to do his little bit; though how it happened—" In the act of helping himself he glanced merrily around the table. "Eh, 'Beida, my li'l gel, what be you starin' at so hard?"
"Father looks fine, don't-a?" responded 'Beida, addressing the company.
"What I want to know," said 'Bert, "is why he couldn' have married Mother years afore he did—an' then I'd have been a man an' able to work a gun."
"Ho!" Mr. Penhaligon brought his fist down on the table with huge enjoyment. "Hear that, my dear? Wants to know why we didn' marry years afore we did?" He turned to his wife, appealing to her to enjoy the joke, but hastily averted his eyes. "Well, now, I'll tell ye, sonny—if it's strictly atween you an' me an' the bedpost. I asked her half a dozen times: but she wouldn' have me. No: look at me she wouldn' till I'd pined
